The next few minutes are more confusing than ever. I assume he’ll be heading home to shower, but I know where his home with Vanessa is, and it’s not where he’s driving. When he pulls into a quiet residential street, I make a point of finding a space as close to the turning as possible, hoping he hasn’t stopped near enough to spot me. It’s a relief when I can see him several houses down: small, but discernible. What is he doing here? Is it a secret family? An affair?
He rummages in his gym bag, pats his pockets.
He takes a moment to lift the corner of a hanging plant and unearths something. He opens the front door.
Aha.
So Vanessa has finally kicked him out, has she? I wouldn’t blame her if this week’s display of violence was the final straw. It’s what a good mother would do. It’s what I’d do. Protect my children first and foremost.
The adventure is already growing dull, but I haven’t seen quite enough yet. And so I wait. And after a painstaking hour, he leaves. This time, there’s a car waiting in the middle of the road for him. A Prius. A Bolt or an Uber, then.
It’s harder to follow him this time. The streets are quieter here, and so I need to leave a bigger gap between us. But eventually, I manage to follow him to a pub. It’s relatively unremarkable, nestled on the high street. It’s a little early in the day for drinking, but it’s a sunny Friday and it already looks relatively busy. Perfect. Risky, but perfect.
There’s a small charity shop a few doors down. I buy myself a satin scarf and a new jacket, ignoring the musty smell shrouding both. Withthe scarf tied around my head and the dark green trench coat wrapped around my body, I look a little silly, but I hope a passing glance would spare me recognition with distance and dim enough lighting.
When I enter, I’m delighted to see that it’s even busier than I expected. God bless the British and our sunny Friday afternoons. I order myself a lager and look for where Will has settled. When I spot him, hunched over a beer in a corner, for a split second I fear he’s seen me. But his eyes are glazed over, staring into nothing.
I find myself a seat not too far from his table, sufficiently tucked into its own nook. It’s easy to watch him from here. And I watch him sink two, three, four pints. Alone. All while I sip my one. Over the course of my stalking, I have to admit my voyeurism loses its shine. What I’m watching is an unmistakably sad man. An unmistakably sad, lonely, and depressed man. It’s easy to see how James felt sorry for him in this moment. As he laps at his fifth pint, a little spilling onto his T-shirt, he looks so pathetic, so woefully without hope, that I almost want to cry.
There’s no pleasure to be had in what I’m doing anymore. Watching Will feels like watching those videos circulating on social media of vulnerable people having cameras shoved in their faces for laughs. I recently saw one of a drone repeatedly knocking into a homeless woman’s head. It’s incomprehensible cruelty. I take my phone out and take a subtle snap of him. Considering he’s promised to stop drinking to get back into the business, it could come in handy.
I push my hardly touched pint away from me and rise to leave, the hops still bitter at the back of my mouth. For now, I’ve seen enough.
35
Now
Sifting through my feelings about Will is a challenge. The sharp anger is undeniably still there, but he doesn’t feel like someone who deserves to have his life cut short. The man I saw today was capable of kindness, more pathetic than anything else, and yet he’d still conspired to make my life a living nightmare.
My mind shifts back to my exes. With Luca’s blood washed half-clean of my hands, I find myself able to acknowledge that he could be capable of kindness, too. He was cruel, sure. But his cruelty was born of carelessness. Just a cocky boy who thought he could rule the world. And who did, I think, know how to love with that defective heart of his until it stopped beating. A needle of grief pricks my own at that thought, catching me off guard. I can’t take on any more complicated feelings without collapsing, so I swat it away.
I’m still trying to arrange my feelings into a picture that makes sense when I arrive home. James is already here, appearing in the living room doorway.
“Where have you been?” he asks. There’s an unfamiliar note of accusation in his voice.
“Just out,” I reply.
“Natalie…” A clear warning.
“Okay, just hear me out,” I say, setting my bag down in the hallway. How do I start? “Come on, let’s sit down.”
He’s clearly on edge as he follows me to the sofa, nostrils flared, mouth tight. It’s so unfamiliar, so off-putting, that I can’t ignore it.
“What’s gotten into you?” I ask.
“I thought you were going to start explaining yourself.”
“Jesus, James. I’m back an hour later than usual. It’s not like I’ve disappeared for days on end.”
“Well, were you in the office today? We both know I was out with clients, but where were you?”
Admitting I wasn’t there feels like losing the argument we’re suddenly having.
James keeps going. “You might not care about your career enough to take it seriously”—ouch—“but you can’t just pull vanishing acts. Do I need to embarrass you by reminding you that I own the business, and people tell me what’s going on? Particularly if they’re concerned that my PA, who is also my wife, has gone AWOL. They worry. You’re making them worry about you. Besides, you wouldn’t have driven to the office, and you clearly took the car. So where were you?”
“Okay, babe, can we please calm down a little, and I’ll explain.” I can almost hear his teeth grinding. “I was with Will.”
His eyes darken. “You were what?”
